These profiles are for anyone involved with or interested in humanitarian assistance to access and understand the data for both government donors and countries receiving humanitarian assistance. They provide analysis on humanitarian funding data from 2003 to 2012 (including 2013 where data is available). Importantly in the context of risk, resilience and poverty, they also contextualise humanitarian assistance within wider official development assistance. As a new feature to all 69 profiles, there is a summary of key facts giving a quick overview of financing trends, donor policies and recipient vulnerability indicators.

The country profiles provide insight into the individual donor behaviour behind the overall global trend of increased humanitarian assistance (as reported in our GHA Report 2014). Kuwait’s profile in particular highlights the growth in funding from countries outside the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Development Assistance Committee (DAC), showing an increase in its humanitarian assistance by 2,315%, from US$14 million in 2012 to US$327 million in 2013. Our new profiles for OECD DAC donors Luxembourg and Italy, however, illustrate that this was not the case for every donor; both marginally decreased their contributions by US$1 million and US$7 million, respectively. Australia reduced its humanitarian expenditure by the largest percentage of the OECD DAC donors in 2013, with a 21% decrease.

From the recipient perspective, the country profiles provide funding background to the current high-profile UN-coordinated humanitarian appeals, including appeals for Level 3 emergencies in Syria, Central African Republic (CAR) and the Philippines in 2013. As a result of the prolonged crisis in Syria, its humanitarian assistance peaked at US$1.5 billion in 2012, making Syria the largest recipient that year. Initial estimates of Syria’s humanitarian assistance in 2013 total US$1.4 billion. At the other end of the funding spectrum, the crisis in CAR has been consistently classified as a ‘forgotten crisis’ by the European Commission’s Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection department (ECHO) Global Vulnerability and Crisis Assessment. The CAR 2013 Appeal was the most underfunded appeal among the three Level 3 emergencies that year. Despite a significant increase (142%) in the total humanitarian assistance received by CAR (US$69 million in 2012 to US$167 million in 2013), CAR’s profile shows that only 53% of needs were met by international donors.

Prior to the Ebola virus outbreak, Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia collectively received US$35 million in humanitarian assistance in 2013; the UN Response Plan is currently requesting US$1.5 billion to respond to the crisis, of which 77% had been covered by 9 January 2015. The United States is the top donor to the appeal having contributed US$230 million, followed by the UK (US$132 million) and Germany (US$129 million).